Grace
by threesquares
Summary: Tag for The Partners in the Divorce, Season 8. A continuation of the end scene. Just because I needed a little bit more. Always, right?


A/N: As anyone knows who loves a television show, or a book series for that matter, when you have high expectations for the next episode/chapter/book, it is easy to be disappointed. Or at least, I think so. Maybe I am alone in this. But that said, I think this is true because our expectations become so specific. I loved the many many interactions between Booth and Brennan in earlier seasons and right or wrong, my perception has been that we don't get as many, or the same kind, or the ones I wanted or whatever, in later seasons. But both DB and ED are really really good. And I am finding that usually, when I watch an episode over, I find more there to like in the B&B interactions than I remembered. In the Partners in the Divorce, as I watched the first time, I wanted _so badly_ for there to be more. More reconciliation, more physical contact, more signs of closeness, to balance out so many detailed scenes of discord. I left that episode feeling so let down. But on watching it again the other day, I was able to see little signs all through the episode of Booth and Brennan trying to understand, to reach out. Both of them. And the end scene was pretty good. Booth drinking, the way his voice sounded. Brennan's voice, the way she sounded, her rarely seen self-questioning. That's all. Just thought I'd mention that. I hope you like my story.

3sq, April 15, 2013

* * *

[Brennan and Booth fighting, walking almost running into the construction site]

Foreman: Hey is everything okay here?

Brennan: No!

Booth: No!

Brennan: I need to get to your construction shute.

Foreman: Now wait, that is a very dangerous area. I can't let you go back there.

Booth: FBI, _angry_ FBI.

Foreman: Hey, I'm not supposed to let anyone...hey, hey, where are you going?!

[Brennan and Booth observe all the ways that this could be the murder scene. Brennan decides she needs to take a closer look.]

Brennan: Just, hold my feet.

Booth pauses, then crosses his arms: No.

Brennan: Then, fine. I will act as I previously stated. I will act as as the free agent that I am.

Foreman: I am not sticking around here to watch her kill herself.

Booth: One move and I will shoot you–

Brennan lunges into the chute. Booth, as if he has been keeping track of her even as he interacts with the foreman, grabs her around the legs.

"Don't drop me."

"I won't. Bones..."

"I see blood and tissue, Booth. This is where he died."

*******************B&B**********************

The last few days had been _awful_. The practice of their partnership had seen them through these days intellectually. Sex had gotten them through them physically. Emotionally, however, they just couldn't seem to connect, to understand one another.

Brennan offered facts (details of her time away; statistics about other cultures or times; rational arguments) like a cat drops a mouse at its owner's feet, or a child an inexpertly reglued vase to a parent: on the offense but also somehow supplicating.

Booth filled the empty place inside of him–_that gaping hungry hole that felt a little too much like fear, too much like despair–_by making suggestions for activities, ways to prove they are a family, the family he hoped they were but weren't, quite, when she left. Now he felt the terrifying almost-certainty that they never would get there, that they had lost their chance to be that kind of family.

Brennan was pulled up short (_something Booth would say, she thought_) by Mr. Abernathy's observation that what seemed to her to be a civil exchange of apologies and reconciliation was _actually_ a strained and tense pseudo-reconciliation that any (_moron_) would recognize as such. Her stomach knotted in the dream fear of every long-time student: Faced with a final exam for a class she had forgotten to attend all semester, how to interpret and analyze data without any context or guidelines or instruction. Ignorance that is crushing in its vastness. How can she _ever_ learn this?

Booth was finally sitting still. Christine was in bed. This awful case was closed. He drank a steady course of decent scotch calculated to slow the frantic assault of the images of anger and recriminations and doubts. He sat at the counter; bent his head over his scotch. He breathed, just breathed. Let the liquor dull the edges. Let the flood of images and emotions from the day settle: from the first interactions over Bones' breakfast to the confrontation at the murder site. Waited. Waited to see what was left. What was important would stay on the surface, would float; all the rest, the crap that didn't matter, would sink.

_Don't you know you can't rush her?_ He had said that once, to Sweets. How had he forgotten?

The door opened, closed. She was home.

_There is something wrong with me; There is nothing wrong with you Bones; I went to see Sweets; Why?; I thought everything was fine; Because we were being polite; But everything wasn't fine; I hoped it would be in the future; I don't want to be polite; Then I won't let it happen again; How?; When we kiss; I have a solution; Do you have a time machine in the basement?; We can take Christine to the carousel_, _even though I know the outcome; You are a wild woman._

She was tired but not hungry, she was glad, so glad, to sip the scotch from his mouth as they stood close in their living room, at home together. He broke away after a few minutes to do his nightly circuit of the downstairs: cross to the light switch, check the alarm was set, press the timer on the coffee pot, turn off the overhead in the back hallway. Brennan watched him, his natural, casual grace muted, diminished by weariness, by the ache in his feet.

She tried to think only one thing as she watched him, as she waited for him to rejoin her. _Do not be polite. _Think the truth–at least inside herself, whatever it might be. Do not pretend, even to herself. She _loved_ him. She had been so mad at him. She _hated_ how irrational he was when he was angry; how he insisted on being angry whenever and whereever he was at the time, how he couldn't save it for later when they were alone, couldn't be reasoned with. Hated it. Nevertheless. She _loved _him. When he was angry. When he was not angry. She wanted to watch him close up for the night, every night.

"Booth." Her alto, still low and strained with sadness and internal conflict. He hated seeing her so insecure. It just wasn't _Bones. _He would have smiled but he felt nothing but unhappy at her distress.

He turned away from a quick check of the knobs on the gas range and joined her in the now dim room. The only light was from the stairs leading up to their bedroom. He put his arms around her again and she rested her own hands on his shoulders although she didn't hug him or curl into him as he half expected and desired. Her eyes sparkled like dark stars in her pale face, and he bent and nuzzled her cheek a little, chafing her gently with his rough face, kissing under her ear the way he knew she liked.

She leaned into him a little to acknowledge the gesture and then pulled back to say, hesitantly, "I think that I need to tell you something else, Booth."

His heart stopped. Just stopped. Because this _this moment_ had been what he had been dreading. He just _knew something bad was going to happen_.

"Bones, just stop a minute, we'll get–"

"Booth, it's not bad, what I have to say. I promise." A small smile bent her lips, he recognized the pride in her expression: she had read him right, could tell that he assumed the worst. He felt sad that she still felt like he was a puzzle that she had to solve, but was glad for the relief he felt. "I need to tell you that I love you." She looked at him hard, willing him to understand what she was telling him.

He didn't understand. "I know, Bones. I know you love me."

"No, Booth, I..." she let out a small exasperated chuff of a sound and shook her head. Her lips pressed together in determination as she tried again. "I love you. I don't love you for the foreseeable future."

Now his eyebrows came together. "What?"

Instead of feeling more frustrated, she suddenly felt lighter. She was saying it, she was. "I have been loving you but allowing for circumstances to change, expecting–statistically–that they _would_ change. Someday. Now, I am going to love you and assume that circumstances will_ not_ change. There are many processes, that, once put in motion, are extremely unlikely to change. Something extraordinary would have to happen for them to stop. I realized that my love for you is like this."

Booth, finally catching on, felt his mouth involuntarily moving into a besotted smile. Usually, he controlled it well, but if left unchecked, his ridiculous addiction to, passion for, this woman made him look like a freaking idiot. "Bones, are you saying you will love me forever?"

She looked ready to argue with him, but caught herself, a rueful smile on her lips. "Yes. I am saying that I will love you forever. I don't know of anything that would stop me from loving you."

He leaned over and kissed her, his heart in his throat and now the shine of unspoken emotion in his own eyes. He didn't bother to blink it away when he drew back but let her see how she had moved him. He did cup her face in his hand and rub his thumb gently across her cheek.

"God, I love you, Bones." A statement of fact and a prayer.

This time she leaned up and kissed him, slipping one hand down to thread their fingers together. "C'mon, Booth. Let's go to bed." She tugged him toward the stairs.

They made love and stayed pressed together for a long time after, kissing over and over, side by side, under the warmth of the covers. Brennan fell asleep first, her head on his bent arm, her silky hair laying sweetly on his bare skin. Booth watched her sleep and thought about what she had said.

Bones was extraordinary and special, he knew that. But he was struck, suddenly, by how ordinary this day was in some ways. They had fought. All couples fought. She had been forced to change and as much as every instinct in him rose up to protect her right to be herself, to not change, even from himself, he knew that this was good and normal. It was how people grew and relationships got stronger.

He thought about how she had pushed through the first revelation and beyond, not content to just learn a little but to do the hard work of really getting at the truth of their argument. Wasn't that the very first thing that he had loved about her, her passion for the truth? He watched her sleep, her breathing deep and even. He felt his own breath, the rise and fall of his chest, and asked himself if he deserved her.

"Bones?" His voice was quiet but certain. He hated waking her but didn't want to leave this until later. Her eyelids fluttered and drifted open. The light next to his side of the bed was still on so he could see her focus on him, see the slow smile spread across her mouth.

"Booth." She answered.

"I have more to say to you too. And it's not bad either." He added hurriedly when her eyes widened. He stroked her cheek with his thumb, soothing her. "You don't have to move. Just listen, okay?"

"Okay."

"I get angry. I'll probably always get angry. But sometimes, I use anger like a shield, to protect myself. Sometimes I use it like a stick, to beat...you...away. I assume the worst, assume you are going to hurt me."

"Booth this sounds like psychology..." Bones, sleepy and naked, hating psychology, made him smile.

"Yeah. That's not really the point though. The point is for me to tell you what comes after the anger. I love you. And I love the parts of you that I think that you don't think I love."

Her brow wrinkled and she looked dubious. Then, "okay, I think I understand that. Go on."

"I think you sometimes think I only really love you when you say the right thing, read me right, do things right. The rest of the time, I think you think I put up with you." He lets a small smile loose. "You are so right for me. I love the way you are, and you are better than everyone else."

Now she smiled and rolled her eyes. "Booth you don't have to say this..."

"No, I mean it. More honest. More straightforward. More gutsy. You love Christine all the way. You love Angela all the way. You love me all the way. You don't compromise. Not in the lab anyway, and not in your heart. Even if you thought that someday you might not love me, you never shorted me. I always had all of you. I want you to know that I love you that way too, with my whole heart, even if it doesn't always sound that way." His mouth twisted a little and he rubbed the back of his neck, leaning down to kiss her eyes, down her hairline, the base of her jaw. She made the small contented sound she sometimes made when he kissed her before sleep. "Go back to sleep, Bones. That's all I wanted to say."

Brennan rose up then. She pressed him back, reaching across him to turn off the light. And then she did curl into him, seeking comfort and reassurance, a little confused by his confession, but trusting, trying to trust, that its meaning would get clearer upon longer reflection. Booth held her close, kissing her head, stroking her back.

As they both started to slide into sleep, the combined heat of their bodies made them a little too hot, a little sweaty. Brennan leaned up to give him one last kiss and turned away to lie on her stomach, top leg crooked. Booth slid into position next to her, one leg out of the covers on top. His hand stroked down her arm in a last caress and settled at her waist. Her hand came up to cover his in a move that had become a familiar comfort. Something to count on when they were together. Something to miss when they were apart.


End file.
